Compass visualizations for human-robotic interaction

• Published in: 2008 3rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) pp. 49 - 56
• Main Authors: Humphrey, Curtis M., Adams, Julie A.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY, USA ACM 12.03.2008; IEEE
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: C# languages; Compass Visualization; Human-centered computing > Human computer interaction (HCI) > HCI design and evaluation methods; Human-centered computing > Human computer interaction (HCI) > Interaction devices > Touch screens; Human-centered computing > Interaction design; Human-centered computing > Interaction design > Interaction design process and methods > User centered design; Human-Robotic Interaction (HRI); human-robotic interaction (hri); compass visualization
• ISBN: 1605580171; 9781605580173
• ISSN: 2167-2121
• DOI: 10.1145/1349822.1349830

Compasses have been used for centuries to express directions and are commonplace in many user interfaces; however, there has not been work in human-robotic interaction (HRI) to ascertain how different compass visualizations affect the interaction. This paper presents a HRI evaluation comparing two representative compass visualizations: top-down and in-world world-aligned. The compass visualizations were evaluated to ascertain which one provides better metric judgment accuracy, lowers workload, provides better situational awareness, is perceived as easier to use, and is preferred. Twenty-four participants completed a within-subject repeated measures experiment. The results agreed with the existing principles relating to 2D and 3D views, or projections of a three-dimensional scene, in that a top-down (2D view) compass visualization is easier to use for metric judgment tasks and a world-aligned (3D view) compass visualization yields faster performance for general navigation tasks. The implication for HRI is that the choice in compass visualization has a definite and non-trivial impact on operator performance (world-aligned was faster), situational awareness (top-down was better), and perceived ease of use (top-down was easier).